"Headed off again!" exclaimed one of the larger girls who sat near Lloyd. "It's good of them to grant us such privileges, but we won't have half the fun that we could have had if they hadn't put us on our honour this way. I had planned to slip out and go over to Julia Ferris's to-night. Some of the cadets from the Lyndon military school are coming up. I wouldn't have hesitated a moment if they had shut down on our having some fun here, but now they've treated us so handsomely, even to furnishing a spread, of course I can't go. Hallowe'en is stupid with just a lot of girls—the same old set we've been going with straight along."
"We might have a masquerade," suggested Susie Figgs. "That would make us feel as if we were meeting strangers."
The suggestion ran along the table like wild-fire, and was so enthusiastically received that Susie felt herself a public benefactor, and beamed with importance the rest of the day.
"Oh, what shall I go as?" was the despairing question immediately heard in every quarter, for the time was short in which to improvise costumes. The matron was besieged by distracted borrowers with requests for everything, from a blanket for Pocahontas, to a sunshade and watering-pot for "Mistress Mary, quite contrary."
Lloyd's costume cost her little trouble aside from borrowing a horn from one of the children in the neighbourhood; for Mom Beck, coming in with the laundry before school, volunteered her services. In an old chest in the linen-room at Locust were many odds and ends left over from private theatricals and fancy-dress occasions. Mom Beck remembered an old blue velvet skirt that she thought could be made into a suit for Little Boy Blue before night, if Aunt Cindy's daughter would help her with the knickerbockers, and hurried away to begin, carrying Lloyd's measure and a Zouave jacket belonging to one of her summer suits, for a pattern.
From that same chest came a dress and hat which Mrs. Sherman had worn in a tableau years before as a Dresden shepherdess, which transformed Betty into the prettiest little Bo-Peep that could be imagined.
Allison and Kitty, taking advantage of the relaxed rules, slipped up the stairs before going home after school, to look at the costumes lying spread out on Lloyd's bed.
"I think it's a shame that day pupils can't come, too," said Allison, wrathfully. "We're left out all around, for we're not old enough to be invited to Julia Ferris's party. We were going to have a party at our house, but mother and auntie had to go to town to stay all night. Aunt Elise is entertaining some old army officer's wife. So we can't have any fun."
"Don't you think that for a moment!" exclaimed Kitty. "Mrs. Mallard said that Katie might come and stay all night with us. Mother telephoned to her just before she started to town."
A daring thought popped into Lloyd's mind. "Why don't you come to-night? It's a masquerade. You could slip in heah to our room befoah they unmask, and nobody would evah find out who you were. It couldn't be moah fortunately arranged. Little Elise is in town with yoah mothah, and you could easily slip away from Barbry and the cook. You could sleep in heah with us, and run home early in the mawning befoah anybody was up. I'll unlock the doah at the head of the outside stairs, and you can sneak in back way while we are at suppah."